Jon said he didn't have any belt pouches (I thought he might have got one with his phone). I thought I used to have 1 or 2 in the tins of balloons and shreddies mazes and other rubbish before we moved, but I think I probably threw most of that stuff out. I had a look in my cupboards and in the garage, but couldn't find any boxes that looked like they might have that stuff in them. Most of the boxes are unlabled, and I know that when we moved I just shoved random little bits in various boxes to try and pack as much stuff in each box as possible. I couldn't be bothered to check in every box, but did check a few and didn't find what I was looking for.
Then on a shelf in the garage I saw a belt pouch, it had like a large penknife which was mainly allen keys, so I asked Rad if I could have the case and he said I could. After that I tried to detach the Manfrotto shoulder brace from the monopod, but the bottom of the shoulder brace unscrewed from the shoulder brace and got stuck to the monopod. After a while I finally managed to get it off.
Next I unscrewed by Markins M10 Ball head from my Benro C-458 Tripod, which took a while because it was screwed on so tightly. I found that the ball head has a 1/4" thread, whilst the shoulder brace has a 3/8" thread. So I found my 3/8" to 1/4" thread adapters, one from Nodal Ninja which has a slot in the bottom allowing it to be unscrewed, and a Kirk one which doesn't have a slot. First I tried screwing in the adapter with the slot, it screwed in part way but then wouldn't screw any more. So I unscrewed it and tried screwing in the Kirk adapter. It screwed in partway, a bit more than the other adapter, but then wouldn't screw any more. So I tried to unscrew it, but it wouldn't unscrew, even though I had only been screwing it in with my hand.
I tried for ages to unscrew it. I even tried to unscrew the base of the ball head, which requires a small allen key, but it felt like the allen key was going to break, I think Markins must have glued the screws in. I tried screwing the monopod into the adapter and then unscrewing it, hoping that the adapter would come unscrewed with it a few times, but no luck. I decided to try screwing it onto the tripod and then unscrewing it like with the monopod. The tripod thread was currently the 3/8" thread the ballhead had been mounted on previously, so I had to find the tripod nut tool. I looked in my bags of photo stuff packaging in the garage, which was quite hard to get to because loads of Sarah's stuff has been put between the shelves there while she's home.
I don't think I posted before about Sarah being home, she came home on Sunday evening with her boyfriend Mark, Mark is sleeping in the front room and she's sleeping in Ben's room and Ben is sleeping in Clare and Brian's room. I haven't seen much of Sarah or Mark because they tend to go out every day.
Anyway, I couldn't find the tripod nut unscrewer so I looked in my cupboard upstairs and it was in with all my flash stuff, so I unscrewed the tripod nut and then unscrewed the tripod thread and reversed it to the 1/4" thread. Then I screwed the adapter half stuck in the ballhead onto it. I pushed sideways onto ballhead as I unscrewed it, and it actually screwed off leaving the adapter screwed to the tripod thread. Then the adapter was easy to screw off the tripod thread by hand.
I guess I spent an hour or more just trying to unscrew that adpater.
After that I tried the setup with just the shoulder brace, which seemed to work okay. Next I tried it with the monopod, but obviously no ball head. It probably was a bit steadier (hard to tell though without shooting real life test pics), but I couldn't change the camera angle to point down/up or rotate the camera to portait orientation with the monopod attached. So I had a look on the internet/ebay, the cheapest one I could find that looked half decent was a KS-0 ballhead from dealextreme, which would probably work out around £30 at the moment. So I posted on the thread SteB started about the setup to see if he thought using the setup with the monopod is much more stable than just using the shoulder brace by itself.
After this I read some more macro threads on dpreview and someone posted a very nice pic they got using a diffuser that goes on the end of your lens and works with a camera mounted flash. So I had a look on ebay for them, the seller he suggests seems to be the only person selling them. I didn't anything like that on dealextreme either. I cut up a milkbottle, mounted my Sunpak super 383 Auto flash on my canon EOS 450d camera with the MP-E 65mm lens and put it on my tripod. I focused the camera on a dead beetle from Rad's study floor, then I held the piece of milkbottle at the end of the lens where the diffuser would go. At about 1/8 power and the lens set to 1:1 the subject was lit, although not very well and the front of it was quite dark. At about 3:1 it was very dark and lit very badly.
It's funny (well it's not actually), but while other people (Mark Dijstelberge springs to mind) seem to get good results with shoe mounted/pop-up flash and a diffuser it never seems to work for me.
The last couple of days I've been testing out diffusion methods for the MT-24EX flash. Of the ones I've tried (tissue paper, white milk carton, clear milk carton, bubble wrap, puffer diffuser, home-made mini softbox) the mini softbox seems to give the largest area of highlight but also the softest (i.e. highlight is less likely to be burnt out and more likely to contain visible detail). I would rate the puffers second best after the mini softbox. You can see this in the image below (mini softbox left, puffer right). In the situation below the puffer highlight is probably preferable because it's not as ugly, you can see it is much more harsh (brighter) than the mini softbox though. Someone on dpreview suggested using a mini softbox that is not square/oblong to improve it's reflection. This is certainly worth considering, although I want to make my next mini softbox out of pipecleaners so it's flexible, and I don't have any pipecleaners yet.
John K had mentioned recently that he had bought a macro flash bracket to use with his 580EX flash and MP-E65. Well, obviously I pay attention to what John K's doing so I decided to try that myself. The 450d doesn't have a PC socket, so first I tried taping over the contacts on the bottom of the Nikon SC-29 flash sync cable so I could use it with my Canon 45od. Unfortunately the fabric tape we have didn't want to stick to the bottom of the cable 'foot' and just came off when I pushed it into the camera 'shoe'.
When that didn't work I tried using my hot shoe multi-adapter in the camera hot shoe and connect it with a PC cord to a Nikon SB-800 flash unit. But that didn't work. I thought the PC synch cable must be dodgy, my only other one is in use as part of my Hi-Viz High speed photography (water drop) kit. So I looked on ebay for sync cords. What I wanted was either another PC synch cord of a suitable length or a non TTL normal sync cord. I couldn't find any non TTL normal sync cords (I think on strobist they suggest buying a normal TTL sync cord and then cutting it open and cutting the TTL cables) so I just bought another PC sync cord.
After that I tested the sync cord with the Nikon D200 and SB-800 and it worked fine. So I put the hot shoe adapter in the D200 hot shoe and connected the PC sync cord to that (rather than directly to the PC sync socket on the camera). It still worked. So I put it on the Canon 450d again. It didn't work. Playing with it a bit I found that when the screw bit on the adapter is tightened down on the canon it pushes the 'foot' of the adapter up (the canon hotshoe has too much space between the bottom and the top of the shoe), and so the bottom contact of the adapter is not connecting so the flash won't fire. If you don't tighten the adapter and push down on the adapter then it will fire. In fact, as long as you don't tighten the adapter it will be okay and fire the flash.
When I had worked this out, I tried an SB800 with Yong Nuo softbox on the Wimberley Macro flash bracket with the 450d and MP-E lens. You have to move the flash bracket to get the flash in the right place if you change magnification (I tried 5:1 and 3:1) and I didn't like the results as much as the MT-24EX. Maybe if John K posts some images taken with a similar setup I might give it another try, but for now I'll stick with the MT-24EX (especially since I just bought it and it cost a lot of money).
Next I tried getting a piece of wire coat hanger and clothes pegs to hang a duster in front of the lens (to act as a background). After trying various different things I couldn't get it to work and figured it might be worth forking out for a Wimberley Plamp. I looked on the internet to try and find a decent price for it (Warehouse Express is £30 + P&P).
I didn't find anywhere cheaper (well Bob Rigby was about 50p cheaper), but found an interesting thread about making your Plamp from Loc-Line and mini clamps from ebay. Searching for Loc Line on ebay there didn't seem to be anything suitable, the google sponsered result is a decent price but then $100 postage!!!!! After more searching I found a UK supplier that offers the packs of 2 x 5½inches of ½inch diameter Loc-Lite, but at about £9 each plus the cost for the clamps and the work to make your own I thought I might as well buy a real Plamp.I also saw a post where someone suggested using a Manfrotto flex arm along with a superclamp instead of a plamp.
I did think about this, but I don't think the Manfrotto flex arm would be as flexible as a plamp, you would still need to add an extra clamp on the end of it, and the super clamp is quite big and heavy to have attached to your camera. So in the end, I decided to buy the plamp from warehouse express, about £34 in total. All reviews I've read of it say it is very useful though.While I was doing all this messing about, the sun actually came out for (probably) the first time this week, and was out most of the day (although it was still very cloudy and a bit windy). Unfortunately I was too busy doing this messing about to get out.
SteB kindly replied to my post I'd made earlier at dpreview about the shoulder brace setup for macro, and he said you don't need the head to be screwed tight so it doesn't matter if it is only a lightweight head, because its not required to lock it all solid like on a tripod. He also gave me a link to a relatively cheap ball head, so I bought that. Cost about £16.50 including P&P. SteB also said that he doesn't have any problems rotating the camera even witout a ball head because his lenses have a tripod ring, which reminded me that I need a 'normal' macro lens and was thinking about the canon 100mm macro. Thing is, while my canon camera can't autofocus properly it kind of puts me off buying more canon kit. Having said that, macro is mainly manual focus and the camera did seem to AF okay at close distances anyway. I had a look on ebay and added some canon 100mm macros to my watch list. It's about £340 new from Park.
In the evening I went on the pinternet and watched some Battlestar Galactica Season 2.
Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with Sweet Onion relish and salad sandwich; cherry tomatoes; y-lum-plum from the garden slice of marble cake; chocolate club; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Pasta; pasta sauce stuff; chicken nuggets; mixed veg; broccoli. Pudding was spotted dick with custard. Coffee. Roses.
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